Achievement Gap in Texas Documents

Main Document

This 2010 PhysTEC Conference presentation discusses data, mainly from Texas, and mainly from high-stakes mathematics tests, that illustrate the very different educational outcomes for well-off and low-income students. A range of descriptive statistics that describe student performance within a single year is presented before longitudinal data is examined. Some of the questions addressed include:

What are the grades at which low-income students fall behind the fastest?

Do ethnic background and low income have independent effects on student outcomes?

How do charter schools compare with ordinary public schools?

Which students are disappearing from the school system, and when does it happen?

Is the pressure of the accountability system having an effect on college readiness?

Which are the high-performing schools and forward-looking educational policies that will increase, for example, the numbers of research physicists?